SIFF Capsule Reviews: 180+ films this week

By WILLIAM ARNOLD, P-I MOVIE CRITIC

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, May 31, 2007

The 33rd Seattle International Film Festival enters its second week Friday and over the next seven days will showcase more than 180 film programs in its seven venues: SIFF Cinema, Egyptian, Harvard Exit, Neptune, Pacific Place, Lincoln Square and Northwest Film Forum.

The lineup includes three of its marquee personal appearances: onstage conversations with directors Julian Temple (7 p.m. Tuesday, SIFF Cinema) and Robert Benton (2 p.m. Sunday, Northwest Film Forum), and a panel discussion with director Paul Haggis and others involved in the casting of the best-picture Oscar-winner, "Crash" (2 p.m. Saturday, Northwest Film Forum).

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Among the week's premieres are three films SIFF finds significant enough to warrant special showcases: the French culture-clash comedy, "2 Days in Paris" (the Weekend Gala, 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian); the French ghostly sex comedy, "Poltergay" (the Gay-la, 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Egyptian), and the U.S. documentary profile of conscientious objectors, "Soldiers of Conscience," (Special Presentation, 7 p.m. Thursday, SIFF Cinema).

In partnership with the Seattle Symphony's 10-day festival of Central European Music, "Bridging the 48th Parallel," the festival also is giving a special showcase to the film version of Ferenc Erkel's opera, "Bank Ban" (11 a.m. Sunday, Pacific Place). The musical, set in 13th-century Hungary, was shot on authentic locations by the legendary Hungarian-American cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

The weekend also has what is arguably the highest profile of all the international films in this year's program: "La vie en Rose," a lavish biopic of French singer Edith Piaf starring Marion Cotillard and Gerard Depardieu. The film will be shown as part of the festival's tribute to its Emerging Master honoree, director Olivier Dahan (6:30 p.m. Friday, Neptune; 3:15 p.m. Saturday, Neptune).

The three archival offerings are "The Sentimental Bloke," a 1919 silent from Australia (7 p.m., Saturday, SIFF Cinema), "Captain Blood," the rousing 1935 swashbuckler that made Errol Flynn a star (2 p.m. Saturday, SIFF Cinema); and "Tugboat Annie," the Wallace Beery-Marie Dressler comedy that was partially shot in Seattle in 1933 and is being presented as part of the Pike Place Market's Centennial Event (7 p.m. Wednesday, SIFF Cinema).

Here are selected capsule reviews of movies playing through Sunday at the Seattle International Film Festival. Capsule reviews for films debuting on subsequent weekdays will be posted at seattlepi.com, with shorter versions appearing on the daily Going Out pages. Reviews for showings on ensuing weekends will appear each Friday in What's happening during the festival, which ends June 17.

FRIDAY

LA VIE EN ROSE

(France, biopic)

Marion Cotillard plays French songstress legend and cultural icon Edith Piaf in the magnificent biographical drama by Olivier Dahan. The sprawling historical epic slips back and forth through her life from 20-year-old street-singer and hard-living urchin to superstar concert hall vocalist to old-before-her-time victim of a high life of alcohol and drugs. Cotillard is convincing in every incarnation, thanks to elaborate makeup and a vivid, defiant physical performance. The film curiously omits Piaf's legendary work with the French Resistance, but otherwise sketches out a melodramatic life of triumphs and tragedies, of emotion and impulse over reason and restraint. But no, she has no regrets, or so goes the song. Cotillard will convince you that she lived and died by that romantic and heedless philosophy. (S.A.) Grade: A

6:30 p.m., Neptune; also Saturday, 3:15 p.m., Neptune

BLACK IRISH

(U.S., family drama)

Cole isn't having a great year. He has to transfer from his South Boston Catholic school to public high school so his knocked-up sister can be sent away, crushing his (or his pious mother's) seminary dream and putting him at the mercy of his hoodlum brother. His father is unemployed and the dog is missing. Then things get bad. Stellar performances cut through the relentless gloom of this naturalistic portrait of a gifted kid in a hard-knocks family. As Cole, Michael Angarano bears his stoic frustration like a beaten puppy. Brendan Gleeson disappears into the role of his father, a spent husk with nothing left but bluster and bullying, resigned to his love-sapped marriage and his irredeemable elder son Terry ("Black Donnellys' " Tom Guiry), too much like himself. (G.T.) Grade: B+

9:30 p.m., Lincoln Square; also Sunday, 6:45 p.m., Pacific Place

FEVER OF '57

(U.S., documentary)

When Russia launched the first satellite into orbit in 1957, it was not only the beginning of the space race, but, more importantly, the arms race. David Hoffman's enlightening documentary explores the manipulation of public opinion that turned excitement over a scientific advancement into "Red Menace" panic. Among other things, it is fascinating to learn of Sen. Lyndon Johnson's part in creating an atmosphere of fear that brought the planet so close to annihilation. Recently declassified footage includes terrifying images of Russian nuclear testing along with more familiar clips from our own newsrooms. This neglected slice of American history, which initiated a conflict between the presidency and the military that forever changed the dynamics of power in Washington, may never be completely told, but "Fever of 57" takes a giant step in reopening the case. (B.W.) Grade: B+

Former Kieslowski student Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz directs this conventionally structured but richly informative documentary, as informative a portrait of the artist and his work (as well as the political culture of his time) as you'll ever find. Dozens of collaborators, students, friends and fellow directors share their stories and observations and appreciations of the modern master. They provide invaluable insight to his largely unseen documentary shorts and TV features, the mixed reception of his early features, and the development of his aesthetic through "The Decalogue" (his international breakthrough) and the "Three Colors" trilogy. As one commentator observes, "everywhere he saw people," and his generosity of character complicates simple political readings of his films. Perhaps that's why it took so long for the West to recognize him. (S.A.) Grade: B+

5 p.m., Egyptian; also Thursday, 5 p.m., Egyptian

TELL NO ONE

(France, romantic thriller)

Guillaume Canet's trippy and relentless drama, about a doctor whose wife is murdered and who suddenly finds himself suspect as the investigation reopens eight years later, is a solid study in paranoia and gamesmanship. Francois Cluzet, so good at playing the skittish spouse, is the husband who, after a spat with his wife during a humid summer skinny-dip, finds her dead. Canet is usually an actor and he is very generous with a cast that includes Cluzet, Marie-Josee Croze, Nathalie Baye and Kristin Scott Thomas. But it's the insanity of supposition and the corrupt nature of the rich and their impact on an innocent man crippled by love and justice that makes this hugely incidental story a satisfying thriller and an even better love story. (P.N.) Grade : B+

9:45 p.m., Neptune; also Sunday, 1:30 p.m., Neptune

THE CLOUD

(Germany, drama)

It begins as an innocuous teen comedy, with a girl discovering how cute and smart the quiet new boy is when he answers a question in science class. But right after they seal their budding romance with a kiss, an alarm goes off and they learn a cloud of radioactive contamination is coming their way from an accident at the nuclear plant. The next half hour is bursting with that terrifying state of emergency in which all information is suspect and one's own instincts prove just as often wrong as right. Director George Schnitzler jettisons plot conventions as evacuation panic prevails over logic. The doomed lovers scenario of the third act becomes maudlin, with the survival mechanisms of its characters replaced by passivity toward impending death. Even so, the image of people trying to save their lives by outrunning a cloud remains in the mind as a chilling reminder of how precarious life in this world has become. (B.W.) Grade: B

2 p.m., Pacific Place; again Saturday, 6:30 p.m., Pacific Place

DEATH AT A FUNERAL

(U.K./U.S., farce)

Set in England, "Death at a Funeral" is no stiff upper-lip comedy, but a lean, mean and often crude farce. The approach of director Frank Oz is closer to Blake Edwards than Alexander Mackendrick, fitting the entrances and exits, revelations and deceptions, apparencies and transparencies together like a jigsaw puzzle. Each character is a running gag, driven by a single objective, and kept moving so fast that it is like watching a game of multidimensional speed chess. At the center of it all is a gay man who has come to blackmail the sons of the deceased. The black comedy is appropriately counterbalanced with jaunty theme music reminiscent of Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" scores. (B.W.) Grade: B

7 p.m., Lincoln Square

OFFSET

(Romania/Germany, comedy)

Director Didi Danquart collaborates with screenwriters Cristi Puiu and Razvan Radulescu (director and writers of the award-winning "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu") for this much lighter but no less satirical comedy, which frames wedding disasters in culture clash. The Romanian bride is the former mistress of a print house owner with a tyrannical streak and the groom a visiting German engineer installing the plant's troublesome new offset machine. The communications breakdown is based as much on cultural prejudice (the Europeans think Romanians are provincial and lazy, the Romanians think the Europeans are condescending and arrogant) as any language barrier. Danquart's portrait of post-Communist Romania in the EU era explores the tensions with a prickly humor more wry that funny, and not particularly optimistic. (S.A.) Grade: B

9:30 p.m., Pacific Place; also Sunday, 3:30 p.m., Lincoln Square

ORANGE REVOLUTION

(U.S., documentary)

It feels like a repeat of the sordid U.S. election scandals, where voters were barred from doing their democratic duty and blame was placed on ballots and the process. But during the 2004 elections in the Ukraine -- where citizens had endured a visibly corrupt governing under President Kuchma and his endorsed, equally criminal sucessor, they refused to accept the lies. The country faced an optimistic future under the Kennedyesque visage of Viktor Yushchenko, who was even poisoned by the incumbent party and nearly died. People took to the streets and forced three elections to cleanse themselves of a government that stooped to rigging and who believed "the power of truth is inferior to the truth of power." It's a fascinating look at how true leveling power comes with unifying under an umbrella of a belief. (P.N.) Grade: B

4 p.m., Harvard Exit

PROTAGONIST

(U.S., documentary)

The line between who we are, who we want to be, and who we become is thrillingly explored in Jessica Wu's inventive documentary about four men who go astray in their struggles for positive self-identity. Going outside the conventions of the documentary, Wu constructs her story according to the rules of Greek tragedy, and dramatizes several anecdotes with puppets. The four subjects are a gay Christian evangelist forcing himself into a heterosexual mold, a victim of child abuse finding power and self-esteem as a bank robber, a weakling who adopts a martial-arts character from a television program as his role model, and the conflicted son of a Nazi and a Jew who becomes an international terrorist. Wu's perspective is mythical, not sociological, and she portrays these people, not as victims, but as perpetrators. (B.W.) Grade: B

7 p.m., Pacific Place; again Sunday, 1 p.m., Lincoln Square

EAGLE VS. SHARK

(New Zealand, romantic comedy)

Imagine "Napoleon Dynamite" reconceived as a 20-something arrested adolescent in New Zealand and viewed from the infatuated perspective of a lovesick fast-food clerk who is as socially awkward as he is willfully oblivious. Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) is a self-absorbed video nerd obsessed with revenge against a high school bully and Lily (Loren Horsley) happily drives him to his rendezvous with fate (he needs a ride home), only to get dumped with an excuse out of the Pee-Wee Herman romantic handbook: "Damn! I'm too complex." Taika Waititi's geek love story is even more low-key than its inspiration and not as clever, but as Lily bonds with his neurotic family, the film settles in to a comfortable warmth and an askew sense of humor. (S.A.) Grade: B-

4 p.m., Neptune

NO REGRET

(South Korea, gay romance)

The road to happiness is turbulent to say the least when an idealistic orphan turned slick, guarded male prostitute gives in to his heart and embraces a persistent admirer turned customer, a smitten corporate executive under the thumb of powerful, image-conscious parents. Said to be the first gay film from an out gay filmmaker in South Korea, Leesong Hee-il's debut feature is at heart a tender and emotionally intimate (if somewhat languorous and slow-moving) film about love in a tawdry world of sex for sale in the taboo gay underground of Seoul. Title aside, there are surely some things the lovers regret (like the emotionally and physically violent third act) but it's a compassionate portrait of vulnerable souls finding their place in a hostile environment. (S.A.) Grade: B-

9:15 p.m., Harvard Exit; also Monday, 4 p.m., Egyptian

BIG RIG

(U.S., documentary)

Like the truckers themselves, this documentary starts out celebrating the honorable knights of the highway, the modern-day cowboys who ensure our malls have shoes, our pumps have gas and our groceries have melons. That mythic veneer rapidly falls away, however, as we ride along with each in turn. Personalities range from the former "corporate puke" to the husband-and-wife team to the amputee, but all speak of the risk of injury or violence, devotion to absent family, the squeeze of high gas prices and the disappearing independent operator. In the context of adhering to federal rules and adjusting compliance on every crossing of a state line, the predominantly Southern brand of working-class anti-government conservatism starts to make better sense. (G.T.) Grade: C+

9:30 p.m., Egyptian; also Saturday, 3:15 p.m., Egyptian

THE CHAMPAGNE SPY

(Israel/Germany, documentary)

The story itself is fascinating, told through the eyes of son Oded, about his father, an Israeli who pretended to be a German during the '60s conflict between Egypt and Israel and who was put into service as a spy, hoping to find evidence about German scientists helping Egypt create nuclear arms to annihilate Israel. The film, aridly faithful to fact, is a decent and docile documentary about a slice of espionage history that is told without frills or much fanfare. It stays close and personal and pulls its power from the family betrayal and hurt when dad is revealed as a bigamist and is imprisoned for his activities. But, with such big screen drama, it could have been a little more, well, James Bond. (P.N.) Grade: C+

4:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema

LIFE ON THE EDGE

(Spain, drama)

A would-be teenage revolutionary in Franco-era '70s Spain channels his frustrations through small-time gambling. He finds a recklessly romantic mentor in professional gambler El Chino (an intense Oscar Jaenada, looking like a young, lean Javier Bardem in disco wardrobe) and winds up an anxiety ridden partner in a bank swindle and Chino's increasingly escalating stakes. Ventura Pons looks at both the allure of gambling from the perspective of the spectator and the thin line between thrill and pathology for the gambling obsessive who follows barrels down the road of self-destruction, but manages neither tension nor passion in their adventures. He's careless with plot details and arbitrary with his gambling scenes, leaving Jaenada to carry the film on gusto alone while the dreary narration explains it all to us. (S.A.) Grade: C

7 p.m., Harvard Exit; also Sunday, 11 a.m., Harvard Exit

THE FERRYMAN

(New Zealand, horror)

Two troubled couples and their hosts trapped on a yacht for six days; a binding fog; a distress signal from a derelict ship. When will movie spaceships and boats learn to ignore those calls? Taking a cue from "Dead Calm" and "Alien," this horror flick doesn't find much new. Its ferryman is a shapeshifter who moves through bodies. "I take what I want," he says, especially if the newly dead cannot pay their passage to the other side. It's an idea based on the myth of Charon, who carried souls over the river Styx, but, as directed by Chris Graham, this loose adaptation turns in on itself quickly, resorting to sexual sadism, harming the token animal and punishing audiences with a rainstorm of gore to fill the running time. (P.N.) Grade: C-

11:59 p.m., Egyptian; also Monday, 9:45 p.m., Lincoln Square

SATURDAY

ROCKET SCIENCE

(U.S., romantic comedy)

The director of the lauded documentary "Spellbound" is on a roll. Jeffrey Blitz' first feature film is an odd charmer with a whisper of autobiography and it's made even better by young lead actor Reece Thompson, who is a real find. Hal Hefner (Thompson) is swayed by his crush on debate team dream, ambitious overachiever Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), to join up after star debater Ben Wekselbaum crashes and burns. The catch? Hal, despite his own weird brilliance, is an inveterate stutterer. Blitz has as much empathy as humor for the nerds of Plainsboro High, N.J., and wrings humanity out of the precariousness of life, family and first love balanced with an offbeat, fine-honed hilarity from universally felt calamity. (P.N.) Grade: B+

6:30 p.m., Neptune; also Monday, 7 p.m., Lincoln Square

FIDO

(Canada)

The zombie comedy is dropped into a warped mirror of '50s suburban conformity and hollow appearances in Andrew Currie's spirited zom-com. Undead servant Fido (Billy Connelly, all but unrecognizable under an ash gray complexion and rot-black lips) becomes pet and best friend to neglected schoolboy Timmy. He's not particularly articulate but utterly loyal, even when his buggy "domestication collar" fritzes out and he starts snacking on the neighbors. A sly Carrie-Anne Moss is the frustrated housewife who becomes strangely attracted to the doting zombie while her oblivious husband (Dylan Baker) flees all emotional involvement, thanks to a childhood trauma from the "Zombie Wars." Subtle? No, but it's clever and funny in a thoroughly reimagined alternate universe that echoes with Douglas Sirk melodramas and Lassie movies. (S.A.) Grade: B

9:15 p.m., Lincoln Square

STRANGE CULTURE

(U.S., documentary)

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson, herself an artist, brings an insider's perspective to this real life horror story, in which conceptual artist Steve Kurtz is accused of bio-terrorism when some bacteria cultures are found in his house after the sudden death of his wife. Unique in that it was filmed in the midst of the experience, the film is without resolution, with Kurtz still awaiting trial two years after his arrest. His case is a chilling example of how an average person's liberties can be curtailed in the Patriot Act era. Leeson does an excellent job with actors Thomas Jay Ryan and Tilda Swinton as Steve and Hope Kurtz in the dramatized segments, which are seamlessly blended with the documentary footage. Longtime avant-garde musicians The Residents turn in a subtle yet creepy score. (B.W.) Grade: B

3:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema

SURF'S UP

(U.S., animated mockumentary)

The mockumentary form goes CGI in this animated underdog (or, rather, under-penguin) sports story about a surf-mad loner (Shia LaBeouf) from an Antarctic backwater who gets mentored by a tropical hippie hermit (Jeff Bridges doing The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" as a hang-ten sensei). Spoofing the conventions of the extreme sports documentary and reality TV, it's a familiar story with a lesson in humility and sportsmanship directed with an amiable sense of humor and a fun run of sight gags. It's greatest triumph is technical, however: animated water never looked so dramatic or convincing. The animator's-eye journey through massive walls of water, magnificent curls, crashing waves and lapping surf makes for the greatest surf spectacle never filmed. (S.A.) Grade: B

11 a.m., Lincoln Square

DARKBLUEALMOSTBLACK

(Spain, comedy-drama)

Rendered impotent by a testicular varicose vein, the incarcerated Antonio is unable to impregnate his fellow inmate Paula, so he asks his brother Jorge to fill in for him at the face-to-face visitations. In Daniel Arevelo's debunking of Spanish machismo, women rule the roost. The men are repeatedly emasculated by the sexual, economic, and emotional superiority of their female masters. Daniel Arevelo bookends his film with father and son vignettes that show the decline of masculinity. In the opening scene, Jorge and his father race down the street and climb a fence, but the father doesn't make it. He suffers a stroke that leaves him helpless with vascular dementia. In the final scene, another father and son have their day of reckoning as they find each other outside the gate to the office of a male masseuse, from whom both seek their pleasure. (B.W) Grade: B-

1:30 p.m., Lincoln Square; again Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., Egyptian

LA VIE PROMISE

(France, drama)

Isabelle Huppert is such an enigmatically captivating actress that her presence tends to automatically elevate a movie into something special. In this otherwise so-so drama, she plays an aging and somewhat mentally unstable Nice prostitute who flees a murder scene with her estranged teenage daughter. The journey north becomes an exercise in mother-daughter bonding and an odyssey into her own traumatic psychological past. There's not a huge pay-off here: The style is rather self-consciously poetic, the secondary characters don't make much sense, and the whole last act seems to be missing. But Huppert, who looks amazingly like Catherine Deneuve as she moves into her 50s (and seems to be replacing her as the face of French film), is riveting, and the film works as a brooding star vehicle. (W.A.) Grade: B-

1 p.m., Neptune

RUNNING ON EMPTY

(Germany, drama)

Burkhard Wagner's grasp for genuine human contact is strongest when he's advising his latest customer how to kill himself. "Wait until I've sent the contract in," he advises the truck driver who just bought the life insurance policy Burkhard (Jens Harzer) strong-armed him into. The client can't afford the premiums anyway, and this is Burkhard's last tour. With the same last name as the author of the opera "The Flying Dutchman," Wagner lives out of his car and preys on the impoverished to make his quota, dripping with existential anomie and stopping at pay phones to leave tortured phone messages for his absent wife. A recurring encounter with a woman who runs a failing motel leads to puzzling conclusions that will encourage rich arguments over after-movie coffee. (G.T.) Grade: B-

9:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema; also Monday, 4 p.m., SIFF Cinema

2 DAYS IN PARIS

(France/Germany, comedy)

I've never liked French actress Julie Delpy, but with her writing/directing debut -- a comedy about love, jealousy and just about every xenophobic bias possible -- I've changed my mind. Delpy plays Marion, a Frenchwoman living in New York with her neurotic American boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg). The pair pass through Paris on their way home from a holiday in Venice and spend two days with her parents (Delpy's dad, Albert, plays her father). The film's take on modern coupling somehow filters down to the vulnerabilities of a relationship as Jack is confronted by Marion's colorful past. Its influences stem from early Woody Allen cheeseclothed through Delpy's take on the world. Awful, overly expositional ending aside -- I'll be intrigued to see what she does next. (P.N.) Grade: B-

8:30 p.m., Egyptian; also plays Tuesday, 7 p.m., Lincoln Square

THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA

(Malaysia, drama)

A sullen, unemployed teen who drums up business for his tire-repair service by seeding the local dirt road with nail-strewn boards, and an aging fisherman who returns home to find his wife has passed away and his home quarantined are tangentially connected in Woo Ming Jin's snapshot of lost souls. Shot with a dispassionate remove and a deadpan formality, it's reminiscent of Tsai Ming-Liang's portraits of urban alienation moved to the rural poverty of a Malaysian fishing village. Woo leaves the situation vague (what's with the beached fish and dead chickens?) and the characters too guarded to emote, as if determined to create an enigma rather than tell a story, but he does memorably, if briefly, connect to his characters and their environments. (S.A.) Grade: C+

9:30 p.m., Harvard Exit

SUNDAY

WOMAN ON THE BEACH

(South Korea, drama)

SIFF 2003 "Emerging Master" Hong Sang-soo has made a career of exploring emotionally arrested men and tolerant women in dryly satirical studies in frustrated expectations. He creates more complex and conflicted characters here and he engages them with a compassion and maturity missing from earlier films. A film director romances the "girlfriend" of a married buddy on a trip to the coast and then complicates matters with a second woman on the beach. He isn't any less irrational than previous Hong figures, but he acknowledges his contradictions, while his would-be lover is as complicated and flawed as the men around her. Hong moves slowly but deftly through scenes rich with social games and veiled confessions and allows his characters to emerge sadder but wiser. Or at least aware. (S.A.) Grade: A

9:30 p.m., Egyptian; also Tuesday, 4 p.m., Pacific Place

FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO

(U.S., documentary)

Daniel Karslake's illuminating documentary on religion vs. homosexuality focuses on a few families' dealings (including politician Dick Gephardt) with being brought up Christian, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, whatever -- and the damage anti-gay fundamentalism and reinterpretation of Scripture does when they learn one of their progeny is gay. The film demystifies the Bible and the rant that gay is "abominable" and chronicles the journey that parents have taken -- some good and supportive, some devastatingly sad -- to purge themselves of such biblical literalists as James Dobson. It has its funny moments too and, in focusing on a small cross-section of families, reaches a universal empathy. If only the people who need to see it would see it. (P.N.) Grade: B

1:30 p.m., Egyptian; also Monday, 6:45 p.m., SIFF Cinema

GRAVE DECISIONS

(Germany, family comedy-drama)

Disturbed by nightmares of Judgment Day and the purgatory that awaits him, 11-year-old Sebastian investigates the many ways in which he might evade death. Director Marcus H. Rosemuller captures the multiple layers of childhood fear and fantasy with sequences ranging from the bright slapstick of a runaway hospital bed to a Roger Corman-ish witch-burning. Everything is handled with a featherweight touch that keeps the material from bogging down in the morbidity of its premise. As Sebastian, newcomer Markus Krojer is both mischievous and charming, providing a lively center in a cast filled with village of Bavarian eccentrics. Jimi Hendrix plays a significant role in the plot, and it is unfortunate that rights were not obtained for the use of his music. Instead, an awful thing called "Slipping Down the Universe" is cited as his most famous song. (B.W.) Grade: B

4 p.m., Pacific Place; again Monday, 4:30 p.m., Pacific Place

ETERNAL SUMMER

(Taiwan, drama)

Leste Chen's remembrance drama of an unbreakable schoolboy friendship complicated by unrequited love is a sensitive gay coming-of-age story that taps in to feelings that everyone can relate to. Grade school model student Jonathan is "assigned" to befriend class bad boy Shane and the two become inseparable through high school, when Jonathan's true feelings come out, at least to the rebellious new girl who becomes his confidant. An inevitable love triangle emerges, which Chen suggests rather than explores. He directs most of the film the same way, jumping so imperceptibly over major events that before you know it they're already in college. Forget exposition, it's a film of mood and inference, but Chen knows where to put the camera to suggest all the unspoken tension. (S.A.) Grade: B-

9:15 p.m., Pacific Place; also Thursday, 4:30 p.m., Lincoln Square

GAGARIN'S GRANDSON

(Russian, coming of age)

Gena, a black youth claiming to be the grandson of a famous astronaut, becomes an object of scorn when adopted by his white stepbrother in this character-driven story of racial prejudice in Russia's mono-cultural society. Gena smokes, drinks, swears and yells, but is essentially a good kid who just wants a normal childhood. He is rejected by everyone except a rich girl, whose father despises him, and a self-proclaimed racist who becomes his guardian angel. His brother, a struggling artist with a Van Gogh complex, learns that the failure to honor one's commitments to another human being is a betrayal by humanity against itself. Actor Andrei Panin's modest directorial debut is filled with the wisdom and sadness of one who realizes that he lives in a world where intolerance is the fruit of ignorance. (B.W.) Grade: B-

1:30 p.m., Pacific Place; again Wednesday, 4 p.m., Lincoln Square

CHILDREN

(Iceland, dark family drama)

A mob thug beats up the wrong guy; a slow-witted man unhinges when his mother begins to date again. They have little in common until a straw-haired boy named Gurundar -- who lives with his three half-sisters and their nurse mother in a low-rent flat is visited by his long-gone dad. Is he savior or biblical locust blight? It takes awhile -- and a lot of initial patience -- to figure out just what's going on in this dark, black-and-white paean to the curse of biology and fate and the change that children can institute, but when it comes into focus it's an engaging plea for responsibility and growing up. It's a bleaker, more Scandinavian version of "Little Children," but it shows its sense of humor at the very end and paves the way for a new beginning. (P.N.) Grade: C+

9:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema

HER BEST MOVE

(U.S., teen romance)

Part "16 Candles," part "Bend It Like Beckham" -- and you have the uninspired premise of Norm Hunter's coming-of-age movie. Sara is a 15-year-old who has never been kissed. She doesn't have time to because she's overbooked her life with soccer (to please her high-pressure dad), school, work and dance activities. She's so busy filling everybody's expectations that she doesn't have a clue where she belongs. Then she meets cute Josh Anderson, who has been raised overseas and has a political consciousness, and, well, you can guess the rest. The film is so derivative its outcome is telegraphed in the first 15 minutes. It may be a first for the 10-and-up audience it's being marketed to, but really, can't we find something new? It's creaky and quaint rather than a source of life lessons. (P.N.) Grade: C

11 a.m., SIFF Cinema; also June 9, 11 a.m., SIFF Cinema

NINA'S JOURNEY

(Sweden, docudrama)

Lisa Einhern's story of surviving the Holocaust deserves a better telling than this clumsy combination of staged scenes, documentary footage and personal reminiscence. The early part of the film deals with a trip to America in 1937 that is sketchy at best, and there is a period discrepancy between the 1950s-era color film stock of the staged scenes and the archival footage of 1937 New York. Although the Warsaw scenes are more successfully matched with the 1942 newsreels, the cutting between reality and bad theater somewhat degrades the former. Director Lena Einhern might have made a more successful tribute to her mother by simply embellishing the 1999 interview with newsreel footage. It would not have been a feature, but could have been a moving short. (B.W.) Grade: C-

6:15 p.m., Lincoln Square; again Tuesday, 7 p.m., Egyptian

DANS PARIS

(France, drama)

In Christophe Honore's dysphoric delve into the impermanence of love -- influenced by Godard and a little Jacques Demy -- we're witness to the most opposite of brothers: Paul (Romain Duris), depressed into inertia after the breakup of his failed relationship with a woman he's not even sure he loves, and Jonathan, his selfish, clownish sibling who thinks by sleeping with three women in a day, he's keeping his suicidal big bro alive. It's all very oblique ("there's sadness put inside us at birth") and tiresome and by the time something finally happens, it's all over. Way too little too late in this moribund ode to immaturity. (P.N.) Grade: D+

9 p.m., Lincoln Square; also Thursday, 9:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema

GRIMM LOVE

(Germany/U.S., thriller)

Keri Russell, wearing more mascara than a vampire in an Italian horror movie, plays a student writing her criminal psychology thesis on Olivier Hartwin, the German cannibal who, in 1998, was convicted of murder for eating a willing victim who answered his Internet ad. There is no psychology, however, in this revolting and pointless re-enactment of the crime, only a gruesome boredom peppered with unintentional laughs. Russell spends half the movie poking around in Hartwin's past, watching the scenes from his life that made him what he became. Sometimes she even enters into the flashback, as if she were a voyeur come from the future. Director Martin Weisz, whose next movie is a remake of "The Hills Have Eyes 2," equates insanity with out-of-focus shots and bad lighting. There is not a gripping moment in the entire film. (B.W.) Grade: D